Quantitative optical coherence tomography of fluid-filled oral mucosal lesions

The decision of selecting the most representative site for the biopsy of fluid-filled lesions can be difficult. This may be attributed to the poor delineation of the correct lesional site by clinical observation alone. In this study, optical coherence tomography is used to quantify the contrast between solid- and fluid-filled lesions by measuring the light intensity change at the tissue–fluid interface (intensity drop). This parameter was measured from sequential axial scans (n ≈ 10⁶ per sample) of 3D optical coherence tomography (OCT) datasets from control tissues (n = 14) and fluid-filled lesions (n = 7) and displayed as a 2D-scaled intensity drop (SID) image. The results of the SID image allowed for discrimination, characterisation and extent of a fluid filled region. The differentiation of normal and fluid-filled areas using individual SID values yielded both a sensitivity and specificity of approximately 80 %. OCT complemented by SID analysis provides a potential in vivo clinical tool that would enable non-invasive objective visualisation of the oral mucosa.